Securing Your Family’s Foundation
Egg donation is a deeply personal decision for everyone involved. Whether you are building your family or choosing to donate eggs to help others do so, legal clarity and protection are essential. A carefully drafted Egg Donation Agreement provides the framework that safeguards intentions, expectations, and rights from the outset.
Experience, Collaboration, and Customization
IFLG has guided intended parents and egg donors through the legal aspects of egg donation since the early days of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART).
Our attorneys work closely with all parties to develop a customized egg donation agreement tailored to the specific arrangement. These agreements are designed to reflect shared understandings around matters such as privacy, anonymity, compensation, and any preferences regarding future contact, while meeting all applicable legal requirements.
Expert Command of Jurisdictional Variation
The legal framework governing egg donation varies significantly by state, affecting everything from compensation guidelines to how parental rights are legally established.
Our team brings deep knowledge of these jurisdictional differences to ensure that agreements are structured in compliance with applicable law and protect the legal interests of both intended parents and egg donors. Careful attention to jurisdiction is essential to avoid misunderstandings and ensure long-term security.
Whether the arrangement involves a known donor, an agency-matched donor, or the use of frozen oocytes, we provide clear, balanced legal guidance that allows all parties to understand their rights, responsibilities, and options before moving forward.
Structuring the Egg Donation Process and Agreement
Egg donation often moves quickly. Before a donor begins ovarian stimulation, we confirm that the arrangement complies with applicable state law and that the Egg Donation Agreement has been fully executed. We also coordinate with the fertility clinic, donor program, and escrow provider so that the legal and financial components are in place before medication begins. Addressing these matters at the outset helps the cycle proceed with greater order and reduces the risk of disruption if plans later change.
Planning for Medical Uncertainty
Because clinical outcomes cannot be guaranteed, the agreement addresses potential contingencies before treatment starts. It defines how the parties will proceed if stimulation is delayed, the donor becomes medically unable to continue, the cycle is cancelled, or retrieval does not result in viable eggs. Anticipating these possibilities in advance allows decisions to be made more calmly when timing is compressed and emotions are understandably high.
Compensation, Expenses, and Escrow
The agreement also sets out the donor’s compensation and allocates responsibility for related expenses, including travel, monitoring, medications, insurance, and legal fees. In most cases, payments are administered through an independent escrow account and released according to agreed milestones. This structure brings consistency to the financial side of the arrangement and helps avoid confusion as the cycle progresses.
Medical and Genetic Information
Egg donation also raises important questions about medical history, screening, and future health disclosures. We help define what information will be shared during the screening process, what updates may need to be communicated later, and how those updates will be handled if they become relevant to the health of a child conceived through the donation or to the donor. In anonymous arrangements, these provisions can be tailored to preserve privacy while still allowing medically significant information to be conveyed when necessary.
Embryo Ownership and Future Decision-Making
When embryos are created using donated eggs, the agreement identifies the intended parents as the sole decision-makers with respect to storage, future use, donation, or disposition. These provisions remain important long after the retrieval itself, particularly when embryos are stored for years, transferred to another clinic, or reserved for future family-building. Careful drafting helps prevent uncertainty about authority at later stages of the journey.
Identity, Privacy, and Future Contact
Whether the arrangement is anonymous, identity-release, or known from the beginning, the agreement should reflect the parties’ expectations around privacy, information sharing, and the possibility of future contact. In known-donor arrangements, additional attention is often needed to address the preexisting relationship and define appropriate boundaries over time. The agreement also confirms that the donor relinquishes any rights with respect to resulting embryos and children.
A Thoughtful Legal Foundation
Our role is to anticipate the legal, practical, and interpersonal issues that may arise before treatment begins. By addressing those issues in a single, carefully structured agreement, we help create a more stable process at the outset and a clearer path forward in the years that follow.
Frequently Asked Questions
We offer single-price, all-inclusive service packages, as well as reasonable hourly rates. Please call our office for further pricing information.
Because all of our work is completed via email, fax, phone/video conferencing, FedEx and U.S. mail, you never need to come to our office, although of course you are very welcome to visit us any time.
Each state has different laws on egg donation. It is important for you to know not only the laws regarding egg donation, but also the laws on the steps you will need to take to establish yourself as parent within that state. International Fertility Law Group has experienced attorneys throughout the United States.
Preparing and finalizing your egg donation agreement involves several steps. The following briefly describes the process from start to finish:
We’ll first send you a written attorney services agreement to review. It will explain the services we will provide and the cost. Sign and date it, and send it back to our office with your payment.
Once we have your signed attorney services agreement, we’ll start work.
We’ll prepare the first draft of your egg donation agreement and send you a copy for review. Read it carefully, and call or email us with your questions, comments or suggested revisions. You should plan to review the agreement and contact us within two days after you receive it, to keep the process moving forward without delays.
The egg donor will receive your approved draft for review with an attorney. If the egg donor requests any changes, we’ll review them and send you a redlined version, showing the requested changes. We will advise you accordingly, negotiate any needed revisions, finalize the agreement and send it out for signature with signing instructions.
Once we receive signatures from all parties, we will issue a “legal clearance” letter to inform your IVF Physician that you are legally cleared to proceed with your cycle.
If you will be using a surrogate as well as an egg donor, please see our Surrogacy Agreement FAQs tab above for a step-by-step explanation of how surrogacy agreements are prepared.
The finalization of your egg donation agreement can take anywhere from two to three weeks, depending on how quickly the drafts of the agreement are reviewed and approved. We start working on the agreement once the donor is medically cleared, and we are generally able produce a draft of your egg donation agreement within 48 hours of receiving the signed attorney services agreement and the necessary information regarding your match with your egg donor. We must then account for the time needed for you to review the agreement, as well as the time needed for the egg donor to review the agreement.
Most IVF Physician’s offices require an egg donation agreement to be signed before your egg donor begins injectable medications. It is always best to have an egg donation agreement prepared and signed as soon as possible.
It is in your and your egg donor’s best interest to have an attorney who is knowledgeable about egg donation law explain the agreement to your egg donor.
Pursuant to the egg donation agreement, the eggs belong to the intended parents from the moment of retrieval, so it is extremely unlikely that an egg donor could assert any parental rights.
If meeting in the future or having the possibility of future contract is desired, then before a match is made, you should make sure the donor knows this (or lists in her profile that she is open to this). If the donor agrees to your request, we will write the necessary language into the egg donation agreement.
Most egg donation agreements refer to the parties by an identification number. As such, you would sign the agreement with your identification number.
An egg donation agreement exists so that each party can state their intentions and acknowledge their legal responsibilities to one another. The agreement will also clearly state that the donor does not intend to parent any resulting child(ren) and does not wish to have physical or legal custody of any resulting eggs, embryos or child(ren).